HOMELESSNESS AND EMPTY STORES BECOMING THE NEW NORMAL IN NYC, John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post:

These three anecdotes are all examples of what made living in pre-Giuliani New York City so problematic. It wasn’t crime per se that made you uncomfortable (even at the height of its troubles, New York had a lower per-capita crime rate than other US cities). No, the problem was a general feeling of menace — the sense that violence could break out around you at any moment.

* * * * * * *

Yet now, the evidence of our eyes and ears makes it clear our neighborhood is simply more menacing than it was a year or two ago, and that civil society is decaying.

I’m not offering an explanation for why this has happened. I’m only describing a change in mood.

And if I were Bill de Blasio looking ahead to 2017, I’d take this very seriously. He won election in 2013 in part because the argument that he would return the city to the bad old days didn’t resonate with voters.

But if they feel two years from now as though the city is a worse place to live than it was when he took office, the 73 percent of the city’s eligible voters who didn’t vote for de Blasio in 2013 will have no difficulty sending the moving truck to Gracie Mansion and shipping him right back to Park Slope.

When the “don’t believe de Blasio’s radical chic rhetoric, it’s all blustery boob bait for the bobos” articles were making the rounds in the fall of 2013, I strongly suspected New York’s decline was soon to follow — if only because I remember being told to disregard the more outré statements from another aficionado of radical chic in 2008.

RELATED: On the other hand, to paraphrase Lily Tomlin on the first season of Saturday Night Live, from the depths of New York’s Death Wish/Taxi Driver/Taking of Pelham 1,2,3 era:

Cheer up, New York, ’cause you’re okay
Though the President says you won’t last another day.
I’m here to say you’re here to stay
And mention, by the way, if I may
You got the greatest culture, symphonies and plays
Also shopping, eating, meeting places and subways
Take pride in yourself, you could be Baltimore.